Do you struggle to find ethical work?

[Extended0088]

Throughout my career I have tried my best to avoid work in industries that I consider as doing harm, e.g. oil & gas, defence and financial services companies like JP Morgan that have a large prescence locally.

In the last few years I have worked for a cloud consultancy with similar values, however, I have still found myself working on projects for clothing companies that I would consider as fast-fashion with questionable supply chains.

I am starting to wonder if I need to take my skillset in another direction to find more meaningful work. I took an interest in C# and microservices in the past and while that has worked out well for me, it seems to have locked me into a very enterprise world with values that rarely align to my own.

Has anyone faced a similar dilemna? Basically, I am struggling to find my Ikigai as I do not feel like the world needs the work that I am doing.

[dusted]

Reminder: This is my personal opinion, not an attempt to convince you of anything else. While my opinion might be unpopular, I don't believe it to be without any contributing value to the discussion, so please keep that in mind if you decide to read it (and before downvoting me for providing my opinion).

I don't really, if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway.

My belief is in bettering the world through regulation rather than individual choice.

I drive a diesel, but I'd vote for legislation banning _ALL_ diesel cars in a heatbeat.

I travel by plane, but I'd be vote for implementing laws to reduce or eliminate air travel related pollution.

I'd vote to ban some of the things I've worked on, definitely, and I'd have been glad to vote to put myself out of that previous job.

I'm not an idealist on this point.

I'll not personally sacrifice anything when the effect of my personal, specific, individual sacrifice that has direct impact for me personally, has no globally measurable impact.

I'm very much for doing good things, but while I'll be glad to do them, I want everyone else to be forced to do them too, so that they work effectively, and not just be my personal little cross to bear.

I won't be the one making do without X when X is legally available, ban X if it's bad, we'll all do make do without and find alternatives.

[tailspin2019]

> if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway.

I downvoted you for this. I considered not doing it but figured someone else would downvote you anyway.

[FartyMcFarter]

> I don't really, if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway.

That is flawed logic though. If enough people refuse to do certain types of work, it will make it harder/more expensive to do that work, which could mean it doesn't get done at all. Simple supply and demand!

Principles matter both in theory and in practice. Just because someone else is OK with doing bad stuff doesn't mean it's OK for you to be.

[LightHugger]

The "if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway." Is a justification i've seen used by columbian kidnapper gangs so it seems to be the ultimate coping mechanism and is very effective regardless of whether you're right or wrong on a rational level.

Personal survival does come first. And removing oneself from a sense of responsibility via "someone else will do it" can be effective. But it's typically not actually true, tbh.

[Extended0088]

Thanks for sharing. I understand your hesistancy to post this, however, I feel that a lot of people share your position, so it's very useful to add it to the discussion. I certainly won't downvote you.

The reason I don't personally agree with this is that it's unrealistic at this point to expect legislation to help with the glaring issues in the world. Legislators are bought and paid for by the industries that are causing harm.

I also disagree with your assumption that if you're not doing it then someone else will. There are a lot of great people in our industry but the number is not infinite. If enough people individually say no to something then there's less chance it will happen.

I worry that your view point seems rational to many people and allows them to dodge any responsibility that they may have.

[friend_and_foe]

You create the world you live in whether you want to do it or not. Delegating that to someone on TV is an illusion. Being a person who will do whatever for a paycheck makes you part of the problem. Voting and calling it all good is about as much of an excuse as confessing on Sunday. Your vote has no measurable impact either, may as well stop doing that also and just accept who you are, you're a mercenary who doesn't care about your impact on the world.

[prmoustache]

Cons:

- regulation by legislation is super slow. For example, disposables vapes should have never entered the market in the first place. They are an environmental nightmare, don't have any half decent purpose. Yet it will take years if not decades to ban them.

- We already have too many laws. Legislations are like licences. The best ones are the simplest ones. Once you need lawyers and legal advisors and protection to do anything, it means we have already gone too far.

We are doomed as a specy anyway, unable to collectively learn from our past errors.

[sshine]

> My belief is in bettering the world through regulation rather than individual choice.

If you can only choose between these, I agree.

But being an engineer who contributes to industry, you can better the world through massively adopted technology.

If you are a road worker and you fix a hole in the road, it might contribute to thousands of cases of vehicles needing repair later.

If you work on battery systems, auto-pilot, or logistics, you can reduce consumption on a massive scale.

[master-lincoln]

But you don't necessarily need to sacrifice anything. There is most probably ethical work paying similar salary to the non-ethical one. So in that case you volunteered without pressure to make the world a more shitty place. (the "without" pressure part is probably hyperbole as finding an unethical well-paying job is probably easier)

[KptMarchewa]

Agreed on a some level. I just would think of not gimping the whole country by banning bad things when our enemies don't do this. For example, Germany and shutting down nuclear power.

[Teckentrup]

You may wish to consider government work. At least in the UK it can pay quite competitively[1] with our private sector, especially when you factor in the hours they ask of you and benefits like pensions, the full package of terms I think looks surprisingly competitive.

But more importantly I think the work is meaningful. Whatever your view of government in general, or any executive of the day, often tech folk in gov have a chance to make solid products that benefit millions by just working simply and smoothly.

I think making services that work well, especially when users have no choice about engaging with them (and often when they get important goods and services as a result!), is one of the better streams of tech for good jobs out there.

[1]: https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk

[Extended0088]

This is great answer, thanks. I'm also in the UK and I'll take a look. I agree that the services that can be built for the government can be apolitical.

I know that during the pandemic there was a lot of interesting work going on in the NHS. I think they created teams that were outside of the normal archaic structure of the service and allowed them a lot more freedom.

Edit: Looks like the government is pretty focused on the Java stack :'(

[hardware2win]

Why defence is unethical?

I wish you arent forced to reevaluate your opinion by war like the one on Ukraine right now.

If I were your enemy, then I'd really try hard to push such narrative.

[Extended0088]

I won't comment on Ukraine specifically, however, the military industrial complexes of Western countries aggressively lobby for forever wars so that they can profit endlessly.

[vmfunction]

At this point nothing is clean in the current economy in the world. The current world is build by warlords (British Empire), robber baron (Rocketfeller, Ford), drug dealers (HSBC), or descendant of them. But some of us may have fiduciary duties to our family or dependants, or student loans, this is only reason that big corp can get people working for them.

If you don't have any of these responsibilities, then do something else that is meaningful for your life.

[ian0]

In this context "defence" likely means "defence industry" and not "defending your country" per say.

Lots of people regard working on weapons used to kill other people as unethical. For example, you could be a pacifist [0]. Or from the military standpoint you be concerned about Just War [1] and whether the weapons you build will be used for something you see as Just or not (say in your example selling arms to the wrong side). Theres a bunch of others like this.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory

[cs02rm0]

Why defence is unethical?

It's not inherently unethical, that would be a very extreme, purely deontological rather than consequential/utilitarian, position to take.

[sydd]

Because you are building stuff to kill people. Even the doublespeak of naming it defence is atrocious. It might be justifiable in some cases like the current weapon shipments to Ukraine, but not if they are used in something like the Iraqi war. And you definitely wont be the one who decides where the weapon you helped to make is used.

[courseofaction]

Because you don't even give someone else the chance to not build a weapon.

[hiddencost]

I try to balance and minimize harm.

I suggest that your best bet is incremental change.

Totally reskilling isn't realistic, but taking a series of jobs that move you closer to skill sets you want is.

Similarly, if there are types of work you would find inspiring, can you figure out what those companies are looking for, and move towards roles that would help you become that?

Working for a slightly more ethical company is a positive change. Stack up many small improvements, over the course of 5 years you might be surprised.

[Extended0088]

Thanks. I wasn't thinking of a total reskill, just starting to move in the right direction like you suggest. I'm just a bit concerned that the specific world of C#/Azure/Microservices limits my options.

[flir]

From personal experience: Education and third sector (charities), or the companies that support them. All the universities I've ever dealt with have an ancient patchwork of backend systems, many of which are on the .NET side of the fence. Fair warning: you're not going to get fintech money in the third sector.

(Lot of people telling you your personal line in the sand is wrong, rather than just answering the damn question. "Try to change an arms manufacturer from within as a grunt programmer" is especially out-there).

[neilv]

One of the things that I worked on of which I'm proudest, was a data science platform for some really admirable US aviation safety programs, working in an elite team.

That said, in my HCOLA city, today I'm competing for housing with people who spent the same decade working at FAANGs and biotechs (as well as competing with old-money and foreign investors). You generally won't get wealthy by working for the government or a federal contractor. And you could be simply priced out of your city -- if not immediately, then as climate change, geopolitical power shifts, "AI", and ongoing wealth concentration disrupt things.

A colleague (who's done a lot of real activist work, mostly behind the scenes, since before the recent wave of fashionable activism), and who was there with me as a skilled techie at the start of the dotcoms, later said something like, "we should've taken the money, and then had the money for do-gooding after". I haven't had the positive impact he has, and in hindsight he might've been right (though it was more complicated than that).

But I'm not necessarily encouraging "take the money", as blanket advice for everyone. That's already the default that people do. And another default is for the person who might've said something about "improving the system from within" to then get acclimated to behavior they previously questioned, and instead chase career status and wealth. Most of us don't need to be encouraged to follow the default, and instead probably need to be nudged more to understand and be inspired to do better for society.

[friend_and_foe]

Yup, sure do. That's why I don't work in SV.

I personally would rather work for an energy or finance company (no retail consumer products) than for an SV company. I don't really find energy production or financial tools unethical, what I find unethical is addicting people to their phones for ad revenue, or building companies just to sell to someone who's going to do that anyway. Or trying to find out how people like to fuck so that they can be shilled a different brand of dog food or whatever.

I don't know what to tell you. In the professional world we are all assumed to be willing to do whatever for a paycheck as long as it's legal. A lot of jobs are going to try to get you to do shit that doesn't align with your values. The best I can come up with is work on mundane stuff like information processing tools or something, where you won't be expected to actually build unethical stuff. You could make games, but you'll probably be pressured to build slot machine level addictive pay to play mini games for kids. Building some back end software that performs a computation on a data feed for a financial services firm that helps increase 401k valuations over time doesn't really sound that unethical in comparison.

[atemerev]

It depends on your ethical guidelines.

I think that working in weapon industries helps to maintain peace by deterring autocrats and dictators from taking over the world (and there are a lot of them right now, so it is absolutely moral and necessary to maintain strong defence force for democratic countries).

Efficient open markets are contributing to the world peace by maintaining interconnected world. It is difficult to wage war with countries you trade with. And financial service companies are contributing to the global trade and therefore world peace.

Oil and gas are a declining industry (however, there is a lot to be done there to help it decline safely and ecologically responsibly). Nuclear power, however, is absolutely necessary for energy transitioning and mitigating climate change.

Only adtech cannot be redeemed.

[sireat]

You will always have problems with others not sharing your ethical values.

Best you can do is strive to do better and not actively deal with those that deal in harm (according to your value set).

The main problem is that EVERYONE including yourself has positive qualities along with some ethical lapses to say the least.

You mentioned C#, you are aware that there are people in this world who consider Microsoft more evil than say JP Morgan? So pick your poison type of deal.

If you have not done much philosophy then a good place to start would be:

  How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

by Michael Schur, Kristen Bell, et al.

Schur runs into this problem constantly that you can't avoid dealing with unethical entities.

[Extended0088]

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out!

[Nullinker]

I also have ethical standards for employers. I do feel like it has limited my career in some ways and that I did not accumulate as much wealth as I could have had if I had different standards. I do have the peace of mind that I can tell myself that I tried to make things better, of course there is more I could have done but I have accepted that there are limits to what to expect of yourself and others.

I did struggle finding work that would actively make the world better, and have limited my ambitions in that regards. I now settle for not actively making things worse.

I now work on software for accountants to automate and streamline workflows for them and their customers so everybody can spend less time on doing accounting and filing their taxes and just do whatever they are trying to do.

One benefit is that avoiding exploitative businesses also seems to have a good correlation of avoiding toxic work environments.

I am still often disappointed that many people seem to totally absolve any responsibility by deferring ethical decision making to whatever organization they are involved in. It's a chilling realization after interacting with someone to realize that their ethical compass just does not seem there, and they are completely unaware or OK with that.

I remember so many history classes in school where we would learn about how average people became involved in horrible things, and the few people that would stand up against it and face hardships because of it. Maybe the lesson was not that you should strive to be one of those people that stands up for what is right, but that it just the way it is that most people don't would rather keep their heads down.

[Eliah_Lakhin]

As mentioned in the comments, our world is driven by consumerism.

I don't like this fact too, but I have to pay my checks every month, so I have to accept the compromises. I obviously avoid to do any commitments in the military sector, and the industries that harm the environment. I have to admit the fact that any input that I make into the consumerism economy has indirect harmful impact anyway. By this reason I prefer to specialize in the front-end webdev, which, I believe, has the least impact in general.

I would prefer to live in an economy driven by inventions at first place, and with long-term planning where the most of initiatives would be well thought beforehand, and be developed in years before they start giving results, rather than in modern startup economy where everyone expect the results here and now. And in the world that would be driven by more decent people too.

My personal sphere of interests is around quite specific aspects in research of programming language compilers. But there are too few job offerings in this field, so I have to earn money in more trending fields.

[hef19898]

I did ask the same question quite often, and still do. Since you asked about product / industry, I'll skip the question of wether or not e.g. Meta is a morally acceptable employer.

Now, what I realized, is that the answer to that question is highly individual. And not straight forward or clear cut. I drew my line long ago at small arms for example, but I don't mind working on defence projects. Others see no problem working in ammunitions, while refusing jobs in high pollution industries like chemicals.

One thing I did learn so, as long as you are not a doctor, nurse or emergency / disaster relief worker, the litterally life saving jobs are far and few between. In the end, idealism, and highly appreciate people that have and maintain it, doesn't put food on the table. And as soon as you meed to be paid, there trade offs. Just what those trade offs are is up to you.

Not very specific advice so far, but there is some good news: whatever your skill set, someone somewhere has a need for it. And someone will have need for it to do good (TM) stuff. One option, unless you want to go to the front lines of social work and development aide work (in which case, if you can upend your life to do so, by all means try it), try looking for NGOs, large and small, doing that kind of work. Or rather the kind of work that aligns best with your morals, be that environmentalists or work in poor, developing countries. Pay will be most likely low, but it can be more fulfilling. Or consider some UN orgs, e.g. the UNHCR. They do direly needed work that directly benefits people on the ground.

As long as you stay in whatever industry, be aware that profits, money and power have a tendency to trump almost everything (even if not every mega corps is either Weyland-Yutani or the Umbrella Corp.). And as soon as physical supply chains get involved, well, tough luck. Because either zhe raw material and sourcing end, or the recycling end, there will a poor, litteral kid somewhere doing hazardous work for little to no pay in order not to starve. But, and that is the bad news, there is nothing an individual can about that indirect harm our way of life causes.

You can look at the very list players doing as little direct harm as possible (by your definition), or actively try to mitigate some of the harm done.

But please, try to keep your idealism alive and stay optimistic, there are already enough old cynic farts like myself out there. We, and the world, can use some more idealists to actually change things for the better.

[Apreche]

Absolutely yes. When I’m looking for jobs, or recruiters come looking for me, well over 90% of the opportunities I have to turn away right from the start because I’m morally opposed to the company.

Just a small sample of the thing I’m morally opposed to, finance, crypto, advertising, defense, anything that severely contributes to global warming (automotive, fossil fuels), gambling, for-profit medicine, anything that’s profiting from invading people’s privacy.

Somehow I’ve still managed to find jobs I find acceptable, but I also could have, and could be, making a lot more money if I didn’t have such a restriction.

I guess if I was in dire straits, I would take a job at an immoral place just to survive, but I’d be constantly looking to get out as soon as I got in.

[shanghaikid]

You can open your own company, otherwise, for the money they pay you, sometimes you have no choice.

[Extended0088]

I have been trying to avoid this as it would have a negative impact on the work-life balance that I have fought for, however, it could end up being the only way!

[karmakaze]

I've gone through a similar thought process when deciding what to do (next). At the time I was in retail Forex which amounts to gambling. After a while I accepted/reframed it as entertainment with a false sense of investment which was tolerable. I didn't want to work in fintech (too derivative/decoupled) nor adtech.

What I found was working at smaller companies/startups that solve specific problems/areas, e.g. photography. Now I'm at an e/comerce platform which does have a percentage of fast fashion but on the whole promotes trade which connects economies and individual independence which is net plus.

[goethes_kind]

I was thinking about this recently. What is your definition of meaningful work? I am myself also not a fan of consumerism. But is not most of our economy essentially spinning the hamster wheel of consumerism, in one way or another? Think about it. What is the goal of every industry? To keep us alive, fed, clothed, sheltered, safe and healthy. And what is the ultimate goal of reaching this Nirvana of human existence? To be able finally relax and be entertained. It all seems a bit pointless from this vantage point. This line of thinking will end up in you questioning the meaning of life.

[Extended0088]

Yes, I often think of a lot of the enterprise work that I have been doing as just greasing the wheels of capitalism. More and more people must be becoming aware that the economy is unsustainable.

I would argue that those are not the goals of every industry. For example, the majority of the clothing industry pushes fast-fashion rather than trying to sell high-quality goods that will last and that are manufactured fairly. I could continue to give examples for other industries but in short, their main goal is to extract profit.

At this point I would settle for work that is not actively causing harm to people or the environment.

I've tried to find b-corps or co-operatives to work for, however, there haven't been many options out there.

[martopix]

I have reached the conclusion that teaching is what I need to do in my life.

[phagenlocher]

Even when you do ethical work there is a question about the effectiveness of the work. At least that is something that I struggle with. While the software I work on benefits healthcare workers I often question if and how my contributions are actually making a difference. Maybe a small one?

To me that raises the question whether it would make more sense to work for a bank / hedge fund and just donate the money I would make there to good causes -- effective altruism style. But that seems like extreme mental gymnastics to me.

[Sceptique]

Ethical work in a world that committed fully to self destruction is not easy to find if your work is not by nature contradicting the world's way

[bluetomcat]

How do you define "ethical"? Oil & gas are an essential ingredient for lifting some societies from extreme poverty. No oil & gas would mean not being able to transport a baby to the hospital or heat their room. "Fast-fashion with questionable supply chains" is only a first-world problem. In some countries, "fast fashion" is all people can afford.

[Extended0088]

Oil & gas industries have been aware of our path towards climite change for decades and have actively worked to suppress and discredit the science.

They use their wealth to lobby against the transition to renewable energy. Only in recent years have they started to green-wash now that public opinion is more unified on the topic.

The list of their crimes against the environment is endless. They make billions of dollars in profit and yet insist in cutting corners that lead to disasterous oil spills.

Read about what Chevron did to Steven Donziger, who had the audacity to stand up to them.